Attention Texas voters: Please vote FOR Prop. 9

I don’t ask this kind of thing very often of my readership. But if you live in Texas and you are registered to vote, I would really appreciate it if you’d vote FOR Proposition 9. I’ll explain why.

I commented on the case of Dale Lincoln Duke in my previous post. I mentioned again, at the end, how Dale got a 20 year prison sentence on a revocation of a 10 year deferred adjudication. This is the very real peril of a deferred adjudication sentence: it is relatively risk free for the prosecution and the judge unless the defendant re-offends in a particularly egregious manner, because the judge can always sentence the defendant to the maximum sentence after imposing a conviction. Worse, a particularly cruel judge can extend probation to the maximum allowed by law, then impose a maximum sentence. Judges can even revoke probation for relatively arbitrary reasons that most sane people would consider galactically stupid.

Now, the flip side of deferred adjudication is that the defendant is supposed to have no record of the offense on completion of the sentence. Well, it turns out this isn’t exactly true. Even if the defendant completes the sentence successfully, he/she still has to apply for an order of non-disclosure (OND). (And some offenses are actually not eligible for an OND.) For at least the first two or five years after the sentence is completed, he/she will still have what they call a record of the arrest until the OND is granted. I’m going to call this arrest record what it actually should be called, a “looks-like-a-conviction.” Actually, in effect it’s still a conviction to just about everyone who would run a background check. It’s certainly still a conviction as far as Federal guidelines go (which I think is also a load of bovine excrement, and which I will probably discuss in a later post). This “looks-like-a-conviction” is only truly not a conviction in three cases:

  1. the right to vote (for what it’s worth);
  2. the right to serve on a jury (which, actually, many people will read as a loss of the “right” to get a free pass out of jury duty);
  3. applying for a pardon (because there’s no conviction, there’s nothing to pardon).
    That’s where Proposition 9 comes in, because #3 above should not be there and is an unfortunate consequence of laws written prior to deferred adjudication. Is it really fair for someone to be given something that looks like a conviction, walks like a conviction, and quacks like a conviction, except all of a sudden it’s not a conviction when it comes time to ask for a pardon?

Note that Proposition 9 does not automatically grant pardons to anyone. They still have to be requested and clear the Board of Pardons and Paroles and the governor the same as before. What Proposition 9 does do, is realize this post-deferred-adjudication “arrest record” passes the duck test for a conviction and allows one in this situation to be pardoned the same way as someone with an actual conviction.

While it is not perfect, I believe this to be a huge step in the right direction for justice. Please, vote for justice, vote for Proposition 9.

(This is not a political advertisement by any third party, merely my own personal view. This blog has been paid for out of my own personal funds, as always.)

Save Houston’s food trucks (from overly aggressive HPD officers)

A recent post to the Houston Press blog Eating Your Words discusses a baffling incident that almost feels like it’s straight out of the Twilight Zone. It involves local food truck The Modular, run by Joshua Martinez, and an as-yet-unnamed HPD officer.

Quoting the article:

“[The officer] told me, ‘You’re supposed to move every 59 minutes. You’re a mobile food truck,'” Martinez said, recalling the conversation 15 minutes after it happened last night. He spoke from the parking lot outside his food truck, which was parked on private property. “I showed him my licenses, explained that we are supposed to move every 24 hours and go back to our commissary.”

“He didn’t listen,” Martinez said of the HPD officer. “He just kept saying, ‘You’re in violation. I can give you up to $6,000 in tickets.'” […] “If I violated every health department violation there was, it wouldn’t be $6,000!”

The story goes on to say a formal complaint against HPD is pending. And for good reason; there is no excuse for this kind of disgraceful harassment of food truck operators by law enforcement. Especially considering that the officer did not name the city ordinance in question. The city’s own web page about mobile food units mentions nothing about this supposed “move every 59 minutes requirement.

Joshua runs a good food truck which I had the pleasure of patronizing at Canned Acoustica IV back at the end of August. I’m glad people like him are willing to stand up to this kind of flagrant badgering by law enforcement. I’m holding out hope that once the complaint is filed, the officer in question will be treated to some free weight loss (as in, being relieved of his badge).

Houston’s red light cameras meet the lens cap

Again I find myself with about 10 to 20 posts I want to write, and the time to write maybe three of them, tops. Actually right now, since my PC is inaccessible, I have the time to write this all-too-brief post before it becomes too untimely.

A recent story in the Houston Chronicle states that the red light cameras have finally been shut off, this time for good. And not a moment too soon. I remember voting against them in the referendum last year, and was severely disappointed when Mayor Annise Parker turned them back on in the midst of the legal fight and controversy following the referendum.

I was left with the feeling my vote was no good, along with untold numbers of Houston residents. Finally, we have been shown our vote does matter. That when more than 50% of the people who go to the polls and vote, that vote does count. We, as a community, stood up and said “no” to an invasive form of law enforcement that not only does not improve safety, but makes otherwise safe intersections more dangerous. I only hope that the other cities in the greater Houston area follow suit, along with non-incorporated munincipalities such as The Woodlands.

Interestingly, I am no longer a resident of the city of Houston proper, but for other reasons. I note with dismay that some time ago Houston annexed the area immediately around Willowbrook Mall. Those of us nearby (which now includes me) got an extra 1% sales tax on our shopping at the mall, a red light camera (until recently), and traffic tickets from HPD. I would like to see the city of Houston actually give us services in the annexed area, maybe a park or a library or something. Or is that just too much to ask? (I’m typing this in from a Harris County library computer, incidentally. However, it’s worth noting the Houston libraries have a lot of things in their collections the Harris County library does not.)

Thoughts (primarily) on the passing of Steve Jobs

First, I am saddened the same as most people to hear of the passing of Steve Jobs. Outside of Steve’s contributions to technology, reason enough to be sad would be the relatively young age at which Steve left us; in modern times, 56 is quite a young age at which to pass on, barely two-thirds of the 78.7 years life expectancy in the US.

I agree in principle with, and in fact admire, many of the advancements in technology and user interfaces which Steve played a part in. It is remarkable that Steve took a company on the verge of failure and transformed it into something that has made even Microsoft sit up and take notice. This is no small feat and Steve has earned his legacy in the history of computing and technology. I also agree with the substance of the statements made by President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Disney president Bob Iger, and Mark Zuckerberg.

I say all this despite the fact I have been actively boycotting Apple’s products in the recent past up until the present (for reasons that should be obvious to frequent readers of this blog), and this is unlikely to change for the forseeable future.

Will this seem odd to many people? Certainly. But this isn’t the first time.

I once had a copy of the book Winning with the P&G 99 by Charles Decker, purchased in the middle of my active boycott of Procter & Gamble (among others) for their sponsorship of the Jenny Jones talk show, which ended upon the show’s cancellation in 2003 (and, thankfully, predated P&G’s acquisiton of Gillette, thus I never had to quit shaving with Mach3 or Fusion razors as a result of the boycott).

The tactics of a company, including marketing, PR, and basic business strategy, are still relevant to my career as a marketing and PR consultant, whether or not I personally purchase their products. The same general principles apply to Apple now that applied to P&G then (though at the time of purchasing the P&G book I was not actively in marketing consulting then, but in a more general self-directed study of business). And thus the same general principles apply, also, to the work of Steve Jobs as did to the staff of P&G during the time of my active boycott of the company’s products.

I have more to say, but it’ll come in a followup post in about a week or so. Right now is simply not an appropriate time.

Tale from the kitchen: lessons learned from a not-so-successful culinary experiment

This past Saturday was quite the eventful day. Between the photowalk in the morning, and an arts/music event in the evening, I had plenty of time to pass by. I took care of some personal business (okay, renewing and updating the address on my Houston Public Library card, which had been expired for a good 9 months and change), which still left me with a few hours. So, it was off to meet up with my friend Nick at a shared space he was a member of at the time, for my part in helping him out with culinary experiments in exchange for a share of the results.

Nick and I were attempting to reproduce this recipe for Enchiladas De Queso from cooks.com. After a quick trip to a nearby grocery store to get the ingredients, we start the process of getting everything ready.

A bit of a note here: despite the fact I don’t cook that often these days, I’m not a kitchen greenhorn by any sense of the imagination. Granted, most of what I have cooked is Hamburger Helper and simple stove-top concoctions, and of course untold numbers of frozen pizzas and TV dinners. (As a rule, since 2004 or so, I avoid consuming microwaved food whenever possible, to the point of improvising oven heating directions when I don’t notice an item is intended only for microwave oven preparation  until after it’s been bought.) That said, when it comes to cooking, I am still probably the more experienced of the two of us. I wound up doing most of the things like chopping the onions and the actual removal of the dish from the oven. (I had done my fair share of onion chopping from helping my mom make prepackaged red beans and rice in the weeks prior.)

We get to the part where it’s time to dip the tortillas in the oil and salsa. I never found out what the reason was, but we kept having the tortillas rip and/or not dip properly. So after the first few failed attempts to make “proper” enchiladas, I make the command decision to salvage this mess that’s going to culinary hell in a handbasket, and switch to making a Tex-Mex casserole dish. Basically, we just made layers of tortilla, onions, cheese, salsa, and green onions. Twenty minutes later, dinner is served. (Okay, so I originally planned this as lunch and it’s now closer to dinnertime.) There’s definitely something sort of missing (it’s edible, it’s just there’s not much to it). I’d do it all over again knowing the result, though there were things I’d have changed given the opportunity.

I have to give Nick some credit here for being adventurous enough to try cooking of this sort. Of course it is not realistic to expect someone to do a Julia Child impression the very first time. I am out of practice from cooking, having depended on fast food restaurants to fill the gap more often than I’m proud of (brown bagging it doesn’t really work when spending the entire day out and about).

I’m still trying to figure out what went wrong when we followed the directions as advertised. My first guess is that the oil simply wasn’t hot enough, and even if it was, the sauce was probably not the type really intended for making enchiladas (we used a store brand picante sauce, which is what we thought the recipe called for), so it may not have even mattered if the sauce was hot enough. I’m open to ideas if anyone with more cooking experience has any.